ErnstKompressor asks: "In light of the endless debate regarding top-dog performance between all flavors of OS/Hardware, the failings inherent in the various methods of testing such diverse systems, and the cost of existing software solutions, I was wondering what the Slashdot community recommends in the way of free, open-source, cross-platform, performance evaluation software. Additionally, how should one go about testing systems to obtain the fairest results? What compilers are evenly matched amongst different hardware? What balance should one strive for regarding optimizations and platform specific enhancements versus results that represent real-world performance? Finally, should such tests take into account the sub-systems available, such as 3D performance and the various Quake-FPS metrics?"

Thanks to the official site for news of the release of PC FPS/recruitment tool, America's Army - Special Forces, with download locations for the Windows client listed by Blue's News, as this "...latest release in the [freely downloadable] America's Army game series focuses on the critical, specialized role of the Army's Special Forces within the U.S. Army as they fight the Global War on Terrorism." GameSpot has a press release revealing the new missions include "...a Combat Search And Rescue (CSAR) of a downed helicopter pilot, the rescue of a wounded Resistance leader from a hospital in an urban area, a nighttime reconnaissance mission to identify enemy aviation." Previous Slashdot articles have revealed the apparent success of the game in recruiting young people to the Army.

Thanks to GamerFeed for reprinting the press release revealing that Valve's Xbox conversion of team-based tactical FPS Counter-Strike has now gone gold, and will be available in stores on November 18th. The console version boasts "seven never-before-seen multiplayer maps, one new counter-terrorist team, one new terrorist team and downloadable maps via Xbox Live", and GameSpot have a hands-on preview that rates the conversion as "a tight incarnation of the PC shooter", and mentions "subtle tweaks to [level] layout that will force veteran players to learn some new tricks." The Microsoft press release also claims: "The secure environment of Xbox Live ensures that gamers will experience nothing but cheat-free play."

Thanks to Shacknews for pointing to a Ritualistic announcement that the Star Trek Elite Force II game DLL sourcecode is now available for download, thus "allowing people to create their own single and multiplayer mods" for this recently-released PC FPS, which was fairly well-received on its release earlier this year. It joins a number of recent full or partial source code releases from games such as Call To Power 2 and Homeworld, although, as with many source releases, "this code and the dll that it will build will only work with a full copy of [the game]."

Thanks to Gamesradar for their Edge-reprinted feature on the making of Bungie's seminal Xbox FPS, Halo. According to a Bungie producer, the team "...decided they wanted to go back to the roots of a game like Marathon, combining it with some of the things we learnt from Myth." Other topics include the originally impossible tutorial level ("I actually had several play testers decide they wanted to quit playing the game and go home, rather than go through the opening level"), and the relative disappointment of The Library level ("A lot of the little things like that added up to make the Library a lot less than what we wanted it to be.")

Thanks to Video-fenky for his weblog entry discussing Encore's PS2 military FPS, Fugitive Hunter. He explains: "By itself, Fugitive Hunter is a very simple military first-person shooter... you go through a level filled with bad guys before reaching your target fugitive. Once you do, the game shifts to a 2D fistfighting sequence (did I mention that [developer] Black Ops also did Knockout Kings for EA once upon a time?)" Since the game was dropped by former publisher Atari, and picked up by budget publishers Encore, the developers have switched things around, adding a final level with "...a network of caves where [Osama] bin Laden is hiding out." Video-fenky emphasizes: "I cannot overstate the impact of this. You are in a low-budget fighting-game fistfight with Osama bin Laden." Over at Worthplaying, they have more info and screenshots, including several pictures of the in-game bin Laden, though Video-fenky points out that "...even casual folks will likely be able to tell right off that bin Laden's inclusion is mostly a last-ditch gimmick."

Thanks to Telefragged for their review of Activision's World War II-themed PC FPS, Call Of Duty, which they seem to approve of, commenting that "the action and pacing... is done just right", though they point out your enjoyment depends on "whether you still enjoy WWII shooters" after so many predecessors, notably Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault, which Call Of Duty developers Infinity Ward also developed. GameSpy are extremely impressed, hailing Call Of Duty as "one of the best games of 2003", with "tons of amazing missions", alongside"solid [Quake 3-enhanced] tech and lots of white-knuckle combat." Finally, GameSpot are also effusive, hailing the shipping-now title as "an all-around excellent game that confidently challenges, head-on, all the other WWII-themed shooters out there and comes out on top."

StupidKatz writes "The Inquirer reports that DOOM III will be capped at 60fps, primarily to prevent certain exploitations of the game engine (reminiscent of Quakers that could jump higher, etc.). Although the game's graphics challenges most cards to keep up with the 60fps figure, what might this do to ATi and Nvidia sales figures, considering that the next DOOM incarnation is set to be the next heavyweight graphics upgrade reason? More importantly, might this possibly keep the anticipated price drop for the previous vid card generation at bay? The horror... On a more positive note, it is good to see designers anticipating problem exploits - no one likes a mutiplayer cheater." H : Sorry; it's a dupe. My fault.

1eyedhive asks: "After seeing some interest in the Programming for the Single-Handed article a few weeks back, I became interested in applying some of these solutions to gaming. There are very few ambidextrous (let alone left-handed) apparatuses that provide the functionality required for decent FPS/RTS gaming. Any ideas on a solution, or at least a helpful fix that won't break the bank? A little background: I have hemiparisis (partial use of my right arm/hand/leg/foot), as such, I depend almost 100% on my left hand to do everything, from programming to gaming, I have enough use of my right hand to operate 2 arrow keys at a time, but the rest must fall on my left hand or feet (including the mouse)."

Thanks to ExtremeTech for their article discussing comparative benchmarking of PCs using newly-released FPS Halo. The piece explains how to "add a few command line options to the [Halo] shortcut" to enable benchmarking, which "runs through several of the game's cut-scenes", and the final page of the article has results for ATI and NVidia's current high-end graphics cards. The article concludes: "Halo is not the most elegant console game port, and given what you see on the screen it's odd how slowly it runs at times... Still, the Halo benchmark is a pretty good graphics card test- at once stressful, deterministic, and scalable with both graphics cards and CPUs."

altaic asks: "Today I was looking for a container format to store my anime collection (multi-language audio and subs), and I discovered popular media containers actually suck. AVIs are a hacked mess and don't even support multiple audio tracks. OGMs are catching on, but they don't have an index, nor do they support variable framerates (the fps value is stored in the header). I found some info on the Matroska container, which looks really cool (it supports multiple subtitle streams, multiple audio streams, a slew of other nice features), as well as the very young MPCF (mplayer container format). I'd really like to hear about other people's experiences with newer, more useful media containers."

PepsiProgrammer writes "Epic and Nvidia are teaming up to create the first annual Unreal University, a two-day tutorial covering techniques for creating mods for the Unreal Tournament 2004 game engine. It'll be held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, on November 8th and 9th, 2003." With this event, the million-dollar Make Something Unreal contest, and the free Unreal Technology video tutorials, looks like Epic is pushing their engine heavily as weapon of choice for FPS modders.

daitengu writes "ShackNews is reporting that PC FPS Counter-Strike: Condition Zero will be going gold this Friday. The targeted release date is then November 18 [possibly to match the Xbox Counter-Strike's street date?] The game is a single-player focused version of the insanely popular First Person Shooter, Counter-Strike. CS:CZ includes in-game bots and many updated models, textures and skins. Love it or hate it, Valve is milking the original Half-Life engine for all it's worth, and this one should sell quite nicely." If you're confused about what this title is, CS-Nation has a good webpage on CS:CZ, including information about the checkered history of the title, which has been through at least 4 developers, including Valve themselves.

ynakai asks: "Today, I had the fortune to be allowed to play with demo applications in a CAVE. This technology is stunning, but what is the killer app? A staffer said that despite the potential use as a teaching tool for medical students, the system is rarely used now except by digital artists (who admittedly create some stunning experiences - try the VRML versions of some). Surely Slashdot can think up better ways to make use of a multimillion dollar room of fully immersive 3D interaction, besides FPS games?"

Ant writes "According to Blue's News, there's a playable demo for S2Games' FPS/RTS hybrid, Savage: The Battle for Newerth now available, providing the chance to sample multiplayer under either Windows (143 MB) or Linux (155 MB)." There are also BitTorrents of the Windows demo and the Linux demo, courtesy GameTab, for this welcome Linux-friendly title, recently cause for controversy when GameSpot pulled a review of it after "...allegations by the game's developers that the reviewer of the product did not play it for a sufficient length of time."

MohitKhanna writes "GameSpy has posted a new preview of Doom 3, along with a couple of new screenshots from the game. The article gives an insight into what the single-player story mode of Doom 3 will be like, and also introduces a few new monsters." Blue's News has a good round-up of the other Doom 3 articles released today, also including a new Tim Willits and Todd Hollenshead interview at GameArena, and this 2004-due FPS is also previewed at Eurogamer and checked out via GameSpot.

jmahler writes "The Legends Development Team is proud to announce the availability of our Linux client and server downloads for Legends. Legends is a fast-paced, FPS-style multiplayer game. The game is designed to take advantage of the beautiful environments in the Torque Gaming Engine while still offering the breakneck pace and variety of gameplay styles available from classics such as Quake and Tribes. Our game has been made for gamers, by gamers, and will always remain free (as in beer), supported, and improved as long as there is interest in it." There's also a Windows version of this still-in-development Beta on their download page, and the Tribes-style gameplay looks intriguing ("jetpack use" through large, often open-air multiplayer maps.)

Thanks to IGN Sports for their interview with the manager of Microsoft's new XSN Sports online games series for Xbox. He talks about this Xbox Live-enabled set of titles, including NFL Fever 2004, NBA Inside Drive 2004, NHL Rivals 2004, Top Spin, Links 2004, and even Amped 2, discussing the prize-based online tournaments that'll be featured ("We have a competition structure like that already planned. That starts this year"), and the planned rise of the pro sports gamer: ("We believe very strongly in cooperative play... You have to display great teamwork, and you're going to have to practice with your teammates to win... The cyber fame you'll experience is the compelling offer we will make to you.") Can team-based online sports gaming take off in a similar way to pro FPS gaming?

Thanks to GameSpy for their hands-on preview of Unreal Tournament 2004, checking out the PC FPS title that's due out this Xmas. This latest upgrade "...will ship with vehicles, new weapons, two new game modes, and more new maps than all the maps UT2003 shipped with", and a new space level has you "...piloting small Wing Commander-style space fighters [before] the action switches to more traditional-style combat." The novel 'onslaught' mode, in which competing teams use vehicles and special weapons to "...control a series of nodes connecting your base to theirs" was the "clear favorite of the day" for the author, and IGN PC has another hands-on report that suggests these new modes introduce a "surprisingly satisfying strategic layer" to the upgrade.

dfj225 writes "According to an article on ExtremeTech.com, it looks like ATI has the lead in Half-Life 2 graphics card performance. Valve benchmarked their new game using the top cards from both ATI and nVidia. Results show the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro drawing around 60 FPS while the nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra only draws around 30 in Half-Life 2's DX9 full precision tests. Read the article to see results on other tests that Valve ran." Update: 09/11 13:06 GMT by M : Another article about the presentation.